576 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. 



sonal totemism (New South Wales) gives every individual a separate 

 totem. In some of these there is a definite ritual; in some, no ritual 

 at all or a negative ritual. 1 



Australian custom has thus cast fresh light on totemism. But 

 whereas in Australia reincarnation is associated with totemism and 

 the guardian spirit is not associated with it, in British Columbia 

 the guardian spirit is intimately associated with totemism and rein- 

 carnation is not associated with it. Moreover, descent from the 

 totem is assumed in Australia and may be absent in British Columbia 

 (it appears only in some tribes and then not clearly). 



A very peculiar form of totemism has recently been found in the 

 matrilinear society of the Fiji (a race probably connected with the 

 Australians). There a man may eat his own clan totem, but may 

 not eat his father's. 2 His own totem is derived from his mother. He 

 may eat it, but his son may not. All the food growing on his father's 

 tribal area (a sacred place) is taboo to the son, whether it be a 

 banana or an eel, or both ; to the son it is all " spirit food," taboo (but 

 called "totemic"). As a converted Fiji Christian explained the 

 matter : 



Bananas and eels were forbidden to me by religious scruples because they 

 belonged to my father. Formerly, if I ate them, they would make my mouth 

 sore, but now that I have become a Methodist without any religious scruples, 

 they do not hurt me. 



This is " totemism " in terms of legal right to property. Any- 

 thing growing or living on the paternal land is "totem;" i. e., taboo. 



In northern Australia the majority of the tribes do not eat, or 

 eat only sparingly, of the totem ; but in some the mother's totem, if 

 given by a member of the group, may be eaten. Here, too, it is a 

 question of legal rights rather than a religious matter. In the 

 Kakadu (northern Australian) form of totemism, the totem is de- 

 termined by the spirit of a deceased person thought to be reincarnated 

 in the totemist, and in this case there is no food restriction at all, 

 simply because it is not a case of real totemism, since the spirit 

 may come from any ancestor. 3 



It is evident that totemism raises the whole question of the funda- 

 mental relation between things secular and things religious in 

 primitive mentality. Are they radically divided, is there a distinct 



1 Compare the paper of Mr. A. R. Brown at the Meeting of the British Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, August, 1914, in which the different forms of Australian 

 totemism are classified. 



2 Compare A. M. Hocrat, "The Dual Organization in Fiji," Man, 1915, no. 3. A man 

 may eat his own clan animal ("dispose of his own"), "but he may not eat his father" 

 (sic), because his father's is not his to dispose of. 



3 Spirit children swarm about and ent<T women, as in the Central Australian Arunta 

 belief. See Baldwin Spencer, Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia (1914). On 

 the connection between Australia and Melanesia, see Rivers, History of Melanesian Society. 

 Apropos of possible ancestors in the New Hebrides a tribe traces its descent to a 

 boomerang which became a woman ancestress of the clan. 



